As before, this work is a collaborative roleplay effort between Behold and Confrazzled. It was intended first and foremost as an enjoyable experience for the two writers involved, trading paragraphs back and forth. Written after a mutual dry spell, with a little less development, it reads more like a traditional short story than is our usual. We thought that, now that it is completed, some of you might enjoy it as well . . . "No, I think you misunderstood." the elderly lady spoke to her customer. "Your mother was quite clear on the subject. I'm not to put up with your protests. As long as you're not yet sixteen, you're to have it cut the way your mother wants it."
"No, I think YOU've misunderstood," the towheaded girl protested, eyeing the chrome-and-leather chair uneasily. "I turned sixteen last week."
"Nonsense, Claudia. I've been a friend of your mother's since before you were born. In fact, I remember rather distinctly that you were born in the summer. Which, I daresay, was more than a week ago. Now, if you'll kindly crane your neck so that I can fasten this towel under your cape? I don't think I'll be washing all of this. It'd be a waste of good shampoo."
"May. My birthday is in May. It just passed," the girl asserted. The weight of the bills tucked into her jeans pocket had never felt so heavy. On the walk over they had felt, in fact, lighter than they had in all the years that she'd been old enough to march herself down to Mrs. Williams's Beauty Parlour. She'd practically skipped this time, imagining what she'd ask her to do. 'A half inch off the bottom,' she's say, 'just to neaten up the very ends. ' If she felt very daring, she felt she might ask for some of those side-swept bangs, like Alicia had. Nothing too drastic to her just-atop-the-breast-length hair. But at Mrs. Williams' words, something flip-flopped in the pit of her stomach.
"Now," Mrs. Williams said in a more kindly tone, "your mother's only looking out for your best interests. You don't understand that at this age, but she does." Quickly, a rough hair brush streamed through Claudia's pale honey locks. Then, a large pair of scissors found itself into Mrs. Williams' hand, was planted firmly in those same locks, and was closed with a swift but sickening crunch.
"I'm sixteen," she protested dumbly, her jaw finally coming unhinged long after the poor, waved lock skittered towards the floor. "I am." Some logical part of herself screamed out, we can salvage this, these could make darling bangs . . . "We can call my mum if you like," came a slightly-more frantic voice.
"She has called, dear," Mrs. Williams replied, holding the 15-inch ponytail in her left hand. "Now, I'll just place that on the counter. You can have it when I'm finished." Mrs. Williams regarded her customer with a more studying gaze. It was true, she was very close to being sixteen. Beautiful, and still so innocent and naive. Much as her mother had been at that age, fifteen years ago. It was cruel, but maybe this haircut would dampen her feminine charms for a while longer. Allow her to keep that innocence until she was seventeen, eighteen, and had some sense in her. Although heaven knew that Mrs. Williams had not been that much more sensible herself at that age. "We're not quite done yet." she remarked dryly.
Newly-springy hairs swung forwards to kiss her chin impertinently. Or perhaps to thrash it, screaming out, what have you done to me?! Claudia felt sick, arguments dying on her tongue swifter than the malevolent shears gnawed through her mane. The phrase 'this isn't what I wanted' sat squatly on her tongue, but even those inadequate words couldn't quite be given voice. Only her saucer-wide blue eyes, and her too-sensitive neck, feeling every whicker of the shears, took it all in.
"Now, where did I put those clasps?" Mrs. Williams asked herself, as her eyes had already found her answer lying on a trolley near Claudia's chair. Subconsciously, she'd already anticipated needing them. Gently, she picked up one of the slender, clothespin-like pincers, and pinned a gathered bunch of Claudia's severely shortened locks firmly atop her head.
Clasps? Claudia forced her eyes away from the pile warm honey-brown glistening on the bureautop, splaying like a beautiful fan. It looked so pitiful, somehow, detached from her head, but her eyes followed Mrs. Williams' fingers from the bright pink clips almost subconsciously to their deft twistings-up. Pinioning what was left of her hair to her head. Her eyes somehow missed the pitiful expression painted across her mouth.
"There," the middle-aged coiffeuse spoke to herself again, tracing the neat parting line that ran around Claudia's scalp. Now came the easier part. The bottom shelf of the trolley held a basket containing a small pair of wireless clippers. She'd not had a lot of use for them in the past ten years, but the nature of this haircut called for it to be done swiftly and efficiently. "Hold still, dear." she asked, if not commanded, her unwilling subject, clicking the tiny electrical motor into a high-pitched whirr.
The black shape loomed in the mirror—that wasn't? It couldn't be!—snarled ravenously, and Claudia's saucer-eyes bulged to the size of dinner plates. "Please don't—" came the two words that fell flattest, flatter even than the shards of Claudia's once-beautiful hair that now littered the salon floor. Unconsciously, almost, her chin drew to her chest.
"The hair is coming off, dear." Mrs. Williams spoke calmly. "And these clippers won't hurt." Although, she mused, the trail they would leave would.
The drone of the clippers buzzed nearer, dangerously nearer, to Claudia. All of a sudden grinding into a newer, somehow more sickening gear as they alit on the nape of her neck. At this, Claudia couldn't hold back her sob, jarring the back of her head further into the greedily-pricking sensation, the vibration shuddering through her whole skeleton.
Quickly, the clippers parted the sea of neck-length locks, a trail of hairs, short, then longer, tumbling down onto the towel and hairdressing cape. A second pass followed, and then a third, revealing a full, even field of blonde, half-inch hairs. "Your hair is lighter in tone when it's short, Claudia." Mrs. Williams remarked in a consoling tone. "I think you'll like that part of it." Again, she moved on, clearing the young, innocent girl's head of hair, from the edge of her hair line, to the boundary marked by the part made with the clasps.
And then she switched off the clippers, and, placed a tentative finger at the base of Claudia's temple. Felt how it plowed through the freshly shorn stumps of hair. "I know this seems short already, but it needs to be tapered a little more, or it'll look ratty," she spoke to the unwilling subject in her chair. "Trust me on this."
This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. There was no way, was there? And yet that violent vibration seemed to serve the same purpose as a pinch in a dream, a pinch to awaken her. It should've awakened her, but it didn't. Claudia shuddered involuntarily as her hairs (could they even be CALLED hairs, short as they were? Stubble, scruff, barely fit to be long enough for a moustache!) seemed to reach out to touch Mrs. William's fingers. The black silkiness of the cape ruffled with her jolt. "Please don't . . ." she managed to utter past her stumbling tongue, though the words were barely audible.
"Just a little." Mrs. Williams repeated, clicking the next-shorter guard on the shearing implement. "Don't worry, you won't be able to see the skin," she continued, soothingly, as she again placed the humming machine on Claudia's skin. "A lot of girls have that done nowadays, but I wouldn't do it to you." Higher they pushed, until about an inch away from the part. "I think that looks darling on little boys, and very handsome on older boys, but I don't think it's right for a girl." Nevertheless, making Claudia look a little boyish was the goal here. The girl was developed, but not buxom, pretty, but not sultry. If she didn't play up her femininity, she could have a few precious more years away from male attention.
A nice, gentle taper was beginning to form on the even field of hair on Claudia's skin. Too slight to notice for all but the most observant, but it did seem neater and more even for it. Now, she removed the guard completely, flicked the bare metal blade around, so that it stood at a 90-degree angle to the girl's skin. Gently, ever so gently, she traced the line of the girl's hair, cleaning up stray bits at her neck, her temple. Pulled her ears over to reveal the tufts that had used it for shelter. And finally, she was done with the clippers.
The horrible whirring halted, but Claudia's thoughts swirled to a crescendo. She couldn't face that accusing tail of hair, sitting on the vanity. She certainly couldn't face her reflection, and the destruction wreaked. And Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Williams was the last person she wanted to see right now. She squinched her eyes shut tight against the hot tears she was not willing to admit stung at her lashes.
"Now, now," Mrs. Williams tutted as tears pressed themselves through the creases of the girl's eyelids, rolled, one by one over apple-red cheeks. "That's no way to behave for a girl that's almost sixteen." One by one, she removed the pins that held up Claudia's remaining hair, causing flops of half-wet, golden brown hair to tumble back down, obscuring the carefully trimmed short hair on her temples and neck, until once again, Claudia appeared to have a roughly-cut chin-length bob.
For now. Because the ominous, regular spritzing of water onto the damp, long hair, combined with regular, practiced strokes of the comb in the older woman's hand, signalled that there was a lot of cutting yet to come.
"I am sixteen," came the mechanical response, somehow unsullied by sobs, if a little sodden-sounding. Claudia almost let herself be soothed by the rakings of the comb, though even those felt odd, eerie, scoring a little too deeply into the scalp. Stroke, stroke, stroking falling into rhythm with the plop, plop, plopping of tears onto the slick black cape.
Thoroughly soaked and parted in a neat line at the center, the first lock of hair found itself in the maw of Mrs. Williams' scissors. A quick, angular slice made it flop back onto the young girl's face, ticking against her cheekbone. And a second lock suffered a similar fate, a third. Methodically, Mrs. Williams stripped these last remaining locks of the little length they had, until she'd reached the edge of Claudia's ear. And then she continued the process, but on the other side of the girl's head, in a more searching, measured pace, to make sure the locks fell at the same length.
The cool silver blades streaked through the tears, schnick-schnick-scnicking their cruel trajectory, bite by painful bite, around the girl's head. Tears flowed faster as stumps of hair slipped down the cape, revealing new-mown fields of blonde-fuzzed scalp and a new side of Claudia. There was no further into sorrow for her to slip, though when she went home, she would bewail this haircut for weeks.
More hair fell to Mrs. Williams' scissors now, an even line that started at Claudia's nice, regular cheekbones, and then fell lower at her ears, rounding around her crown high enough to reveal a part of the shorn nape. A meticulously-tapered undercut bob was beginning to take shape, one that would fall to lip-height as the hair would dry. Short, it was, very short. It'd take Claudia half a year to grow it back to her chin, and even then, the undercut part would probably make it too short to put up in a ponytail. As drastic and brutal as this cut was, Mrs. Williams found that she was making much greater effort than she would for a regular customer. It was fine work, doomed to be hated, grown out, and finally remembered and resented for years to come.
Fine work that was finished, now. "All done," she told the girl, who still pressed her eyes firmly shut. "If you open your eyes, you'll see it's not as bad as you thought it would be." Brushing clumps of hair, some long, some only a tenth of an inch long out of the girl's neck, she used her other hand to unfasten the restrictive towel, the cape, and lower the dressing chair to the point where the girl's feet could reach the floor. "Just a shampoo and a blow dry, and you're good to go."
She wanted to wave a magic wand magically have every flowing lock back in place. Failing that, to pick up every scrap and glue it back to her head. Neither of these were options now, and as Mrs. Williams' fingers scraped through what was left of her hair, it cemented indeliably for Claudia. Red-rimmed blue eyes popped open, and faced the ungainly reflection—nothing like the long-haired beauty she'd come in as—for the first time. Boyish, she seemed. Her jawline hardened. And somewhere in that strangely-revealed jawline, she saw the reflection of what she should have done in the first place. Too late for effectiveness, but not too late entirely.
"No, not today," she informed Mrs. Williams, the Velcro protesting behind her neck as she yanked off the slick black cape, and thrust it aside. "I think I'm done."
The words came out a little shaky, and that's how Claudia's legs felt, too, striding out of the shop. Not her hand, though, as it fished into her pocket reflexively to thrust the wadded bill onto the empty reception desk. Her neck felt like it thrust forward oddly with every step, like a strutting rooster. Exposed. It felt like everyone on main street was staring at her—a dim little voice in the back of her mind told her they weren't, but she couldn't shake that feeling, the sly glances. Not even when she'd snuck back in her room to cry into her pillow.
She couldn't have stood being in Mrs. William's salon for even a minute longer, and had no idea how she'd even begin to tolerate having this hair for . . . as long as she had it. Everyone to face at school on Monday. Her mother to face at dinner tonight, though right now she never wanted to eat again. She hated her hair. She hated everything about it. And she especially hated the back with its alien velveteen feeling, and the way it made her shoulders quake and her stomach flip-flop when she stroked it. And though she didn't quite want to admit it to herself, she knew she hated wondering what would happen if Drew Carson, the shy boy from her English class, rubbed it just the same way. Passing a shop window, Claudia Parker took a long, hard look at the reflection of her shoulder-length raven-black hair. Mom was being stupid about this. Just because she'd been dumb enough to get pregnant at sixteen didn't mean that her daughter was just the same. Of the two of them, she'd always been the mature one. Unfortunately, that meant she was mature enough to put up with her mother's shrill hysterics, and submit to her wishes. Short it was. After all, it was just hair.
She'd taken the long road to Mrs. Williams' Beauty Parlor, stumbled into a bunch of friends. So she was just in time to see a girl, honey-haired, bust out of the door. Was that Claudia Jones, her class-mate? Hard to tell, as the girl seemed to be in a hurry. And that wasn't her usual hair. It looked pretty sharp, she mused, as she watched the hair flop over the head of the rapidly-shrinking figure in the distance. If only she could be sure that wasn't her, she'd ask for the same style. Two girls named Claudia showing up in class with the same haircut on the same Monday would just be weird--and embarrassing.
Still, it seemed that Mrs. Williams had an unexpectedly sharp sense of style. Claudia Parker felt a little better about the prospect already.
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